Monday May 3-From Mrs. Kushin's Diary

Day 5: Monday

We spent with Mrs. Prevenas and her science club, which included some of our penpals! We worked together in teams –some Hawaii students and some Pribilof students in each team- and did water sampling including pH, temperature -not only did we use thermometers and electronic probes, we used our feet :), turbidity, sand surveys for plastics, and beach surveys for turtle nests. After a lunch packed for us all by their cafeteria, Ms. Denby talked to us about the history of the area and showed us artifacts that had been found on the property.

That same afternoon, we headed up to Iao Valley Nature Center and went on a great hike led by Miss. Rochelle and learned about the plants as we went.We even saw bananas growing! We all felt pretty lucky that the mosquitoes weren’t biting too badly. We hiked up to see the stream that is the main water source for Maui –looking upstream, you see a large healthy stream then suddenly a grate about 20 foot long, and after that nothing but a few large puddles and a bed that used to contain a stream. That was super interesting because when we were developing questions to ask about Maui; how people get water and power was one area we wanted to investigate. However we then discussed the pros and cons of the diversion, and it seems to us that this is another example of nature is losing out to man. We were happy to learn that some people including Mr. Skippy – who had been with us at the beach discussing sea turtles that morning - are working to preserve the fish etc. that are being impacted by the water’s diversion. It was time to head back to our side of the island.

With about 15 of the miles left to go we suddenly started to see smoke, it was a forest fire! (Although with all the volcano studying we’ve done lately, lava was the first thought from some of the kids) It was still light enough to see the helicopters flying from the fire site down to the ocean to get huge dangling buckets filled up with water which were then dropped on the fire area. We made it back to the hotel after “chowing down” at Pizza Hut in time to cool off from the day in the pool.